There are a couple of country songs getting a lot of airplay right now, about a father's love for his daughter.
These songs make me feel sad every time I hear them. The love rings true in them, and I mourn that love for my daughters. They should have had it from their father, but they didn't.
Oh, he was around. Sort of. He was drunk most of the time, but he was around. He always liked to lay down rules that were devised for his convenience.
I don't remember him ever tucking them into bed, or reading to them. He never saw them on their way to school dances, and he didn't come to graduation. Most Halloweens came and went without his ever calling, or even asking for a picture of them in their costumes. I did make sure he got school pictures, for as long as I could afford school pictures.
There is not much contact between them. Chandra sees her dad and stepmother every once in a while. I will say that for Mrs. SSS--she does try to keep in touch with the girls.
It seems strange to me. If I were estranged from them all these years, at 60, I'd be trying my damndest to get some sort of dialogue going. Apparently, he thinks it's all either their fault, or mine, that they don't really like him. I have heard through the grapevine, that he is convinced I spoke badly of him to them when they were younger. I probably did. I tried not to for years, but it was hard to explain the poverty we lived in, the lessons they wanted but couldn't have, and their thrift shop clothes without eventually admitting that he wasn't paying any support. It was sort of cemented when I couldn't afford to pay for SATs and ACTs and he wouldn't. The girls had to come to terms with the fact that, to him, they ranked in importance somewhere below beer.
They should have had nice things and canopy beds, and a father taking loving pictures as they went off to prom. Instead, they didn't go to prom. They dropped out of high school. They dyed their hair strange colours, for which they caught hell from their father.
Chandra got her GED and has been putting herself through Community College. I doubt he has helped her any. If he has congratulated her, she didn't tell me. Vanessa went back to school, and graduated two years later than her class. He didn't even show up for graduation, after telling her that he would. He just wasn't there.
As a father, SSS, I have to say, you have fallen short of the mark.
And this is the same man who told me when Chandra was a baby, that, if she grew up with problems, it would be my fault, as I was spending more time with her than he was.
Aren't we lucky that she didn't?
"I Loved Her First" gets me, but only because of the love I feel for Ethan.
ReplyDeleteI understood that SSS was a piece of shit to some extent even before you got us away from him. I don't really care what he thinks about whose fault it is that I won't have a relationship with him. He knows damn well that it is of his own doing, he just won't admit it. There IS always someone else to blame, you know.
I do remember a Father-Daughter dance we went to. I think it was a Girl-Scout thing or something. I also remember the bike with the unicorn and rainbow on the seat he gave me for Christmas one year.
But mostly I remember yelling and beer and other things. I remember being used as a beer-getter when his friends were around. I remember feeling like I wasn't good enough. I remember saying I wanted to be a chef when I grew up and him telling me that was a stupid idea.
As far as Mrs. SSS is concerned, none of it is any of her business at all, and I think the two of them deserve each other.
I do need to thank her, though. If she hadn't stole SSS out from under you, I would have had to grow up my whole life with that man, and I'm a better person for not having to.
Feel free to delete my comment, it's your blog and if you don't think its appropriate, I understand.
You, my love, are allowed to express yourself anywhere you like on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI might take it out if it ws full of cussing, but maybe not even then.
We would have got away eventually. With Mary Lee Harris finding me a counsellor, and the counsellor finding an opening at TBCH, it was just time.
Your dad would have been fine if he had stood up to Grandma Anna Belle when he should have, which was when he applied to Baylor for Musicology.
I don't think he would have been as unhappy internally.
It's all choices. He thought he would have forever, but he didn't.
Not that I'm excusing him, but he knew what he wanted to do and allowed his mother to delay him until it was no longer feasible.
I think he was afraid.
My daughter met her "father" when she was a couple of months off turning 22 years of age.
ReplyDeleteShe thought he was an A-hole. Only, then did I tell her he never paid support, and that he was a batterer of all things weaker than himself.
He paid once, when she was a year old. Apparently, it was my fault that he stopped paying...I didn't write to say "thank you", you see!
Heh, my parents were right about him!
Sorry, Ronni. That was me.
ReplyDeleteI recognized your style!
ReplyDelete